Digital circuits and techniques have proliferated over time and have become ubiquitous with advances in semiconductor processing, circuit and system techniques, etc. The physical world and phenomena in nature, however, include analog quantities. Sensing, detecting, and processing the analog quantities entails using a variety of analog circuitry.
The performance of circuits, subsystems, and systems that include such analog circuitry depends in part on the performance of the analog circuitry. In practical, real-world implementations, electronic circuits like integrated circuits (ICs), including analog circuitry included in ICs, deviate from ideal behavior, with corresponding effects on their performance. A variety of performance measures exist and are used to gauge the performance of the analog circuitry. Examples include offset, distortion, gain, noise figure, power consumption, etc.
The description in this section and any corresponding figure(s) are included as background information materials. The materials in this section should not be considered as an admission that such materials constitute prior art to the present patent application.